Two Convicted in Murder of Young Actor and Aspiring Rap Star

By Lora Neng
WWW.STREETGANGS.COM STAFF WRITER
March 16, 2012

Jarrell Kelly, 23, and Nicholas Diogenes Valerio, 25, became the fourth and fifth members of a violent Long Beach gang to be convicted in the shooting death of 18-year-old Armand Jones. Jones had ironically just wrapped up a movie shoot in which he played a gang member who narrowly escaped a drive-by attack when the actor got entangled in a botched robbery. Jones found his friends held up in an Anaheim Denney’s Restaurant with their shoes, jewelry, and cell phones taken, and when the accosters robbed him in the same manner and fled to the parking lot, Jones followed them out to be shot in the chest.

Nine or ten total gang members were alleged to have been involved in the March 7, 2006 tragedy. Now Kelly and Valerio have been convicted and could face a life term in prison at their sentencing on April 27.

Jones played a student in “Freedom Writers” opposite Hilary Swank, channeling the real-life experiences of teacher Erin Gruwell, who chose to teach in an underachieving Long Beach high school to give at-risk youth a future. Armand also had aspirations to become a rapper and went by the name of “Young Prozpect.”

Posted by Lora
on Mar 16 2012. Filed under Entertainment.
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2 Comments for “Two Convicted in Murder of Young Actor and Aspiring Rap Star”

Armand Jones was very young, with a bright future a head of him. Unfortunately, this incident took his life. Running after the person who held you up, possibly at gun point resulted in his death. What should a victim do i a situation like this? Run and call the police or run towards the criminal and end up dead. We tend to teach our boys not to back down, from bullies or anyone harrblanking you.. like Jones. Does that prospective really help? Maybe, but not in this situation for Jones, Maybe we are teaching our kids to do the wrong thing. We have to teach them to be SMARTER than this.